Android Pay rolls out in US starting today

Android Pay, the mobile based payment system that lets you use gift cards, loyalty cards and special offers on your phone is now rolling out across the US at over a million destinations.

The service works on all NFC enabled devices and requires your phone to be running Android 4.4 and above. Support for debit and credit cards is a given and it works across the spectrum of popular cards including AMEX, Visa, MasterCard and Discover. Talking about the security aspect of the service, Google says that Android Pay uses a form of tokenization that ensures that your card details aren’t shared over the internet. When a purchase is made, Google sends across a virtual account number which acts as a security layer. This means that even if a malicious entity manages to get hold of your transaction information, it won’t have access to your real account number.

Loyalty cards and special offer tokens will also be coming to devices over the next few months. An update to Google Wallet users will bring the new Android Pay features while the standalone Android Pay app will be available on the Play Store very soon.